


Growing Pains

by stardropdream



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: F/M, Implied Relationships, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-18
Updated: 2013-02-18
Packaged: 2017-11-29 19:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/690374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fuuma cannot help but think he missed something along the way. (AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Growing Pains

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ December 24, 2009.
> 
> Warning for fucked up parent/child-esque dynamic but nothing explicit or anything like that.

Fuuma was born knowing that he was missing someone. He’s not sure how it works, or why it is. His first conscious thought was that he was searching for someone, though it was many years before he realized the name of that person—Kamui—waiting out there in a place he cannot reach nor does he know where to even begin trying to reach. It’s always been this way, and he’s learned to cope with the strange half-memories, filtering in to his dreams, that seem too real to be a coincidence or a product of his imagination. What he sees when he sleeps, or when he finds his mind wandering, are glimmers and shards of scenes that must be memories, something that his soul can remember even when this body is new. He tries not to let his mind drift because of it, because it’s like watching a play-by-play movie of a life he never led, and yet has left the lasting impressions on his heart.   
  
His mother tells him that they’re glimmers from a past life. The way she looks off into the distance makes him think that she must face the same trouble, at times. Her eyes are half-lidded, her fingers tracing the rim of a tea cup, as if waiting for someone to join her and intertwine their fingers together. When he asks her if the name Kamui means anything to her, she shakes her head after a thoughtful pause, weighing the name. No, it means nothing.   
  
He doesn’t like to worry his sister, but she confesses to not having these past engravings on her heart—she can’t remember anything from past lives. So he doesn’t ask her if she knows anyone named Kamui.   
  
When he was old enough to live on his own, he started listening to these half-whispers of a life he’d left behind. Subaru and Seishirou are names that flit past but he can’t focus on these memories, for they aren’t as clear as the ones with Kamui. Kamui is high velocity and anger, diving and dancing and avoiding and always reaching. Kamui is the taste he can’t forget but doesn’t know how to place properly. He invades Fuuma’s dreams and he does not know a thing about him—only knows the way he dives past a bullet, the way his eyes burn in sharp contrast to the dullness of whatever world he moves through, the way it feels to bleed because of him, the way it feels to yearn for him. Fuuma is acutely aware of the pain in his heart when he sees these memories, because it echoes resolutely whenever he awakens.   
  
The hole in his life was ripped away because of whoever this person is, or was, or will be. Fuuma isn’t sure how he feels about being this reliant on a person he’s never met, but the dreams are insistent.   
  
That’s why, when walking back to his apartment one day, he’s taken by surprise when the face from his dreams appears in real time—though much younger, stragglier, and dirtier. He’s a small child, barely reaching a fraction of Fuuma’s height, the bulk of his mass shifted outward instead of upward. He’s a small, plump child who darts off the street at the sight of Fuuma and into the alleyway.   
  
Fuuma freezes, bag of groceries swinging uselessly at his side, his eyes widened in shock. He’d know that face anywhere. He drops the bag and runs after the child’s escape route, ducking into the alleyway and looking around.   
  
He isn’t hard to find. Fuuma spots the small feet poking out from underneath a dumpster instantly.   
  
He squats down. “Hello?”   
  
The body tenses up before it scrambles further under the dumpster, the little feet disappear from Fuuma’s view.   
  
Tucking his feet beneath him, Fuuma presses down, belly to the pavement and cheek to the concrete squinting into the darkness.   
  
“Kamui?” he asks and feels his breath catch as he finally says it out loud, after years of knowing the way that named sounded with his voice, and realizing his breath has caught because he’s afraid that it isn’t Kamui, that this name will mean nothing to this child as well.   
  
There’s a long, still silence.   
  
Then: “How do you know my name?”   
  
The air rushes out of Fuuma’s lungs and he deflates, only to feel his breath catch up to him, ragged and hesitant and _there._   
  
Kamui is right there.   
  
“I wonder.” And he does wonder.   
  
The child shifts, and blue eyes stare at him a moment before burning gold and Fuuma almost recoils. Almost. But he’s too used to the memories appearing to him in dreams to be truly afraid.   
  
The word rings in his head, loud and clear: Vampire. This is what the one named Seishirou had been looking for, he thinks. Looking for a vampire. Two of them.   
  
“Go away,” the child whispers, the face staring at him wide-eyed with fear and anger.   
  
“It’s okay,” Fuuma reassures him because he can’t imagine ever leaving, not now, not when the answer to his life of questions can be answered. “Do you know me?”   
  
The child stares at him.   
  
“No.”  
  
Something quivers in Fuuma’s chest, but he pushes it away. Instead, he laughs. “I’m Fuuma.”  
  
The golden eyes flicker, but other than that, there is no spark of recognition in the gaze, nothing that indicates that he is remembered.   
  
“… I don’t care,” the child decides after a long silence, then says, “Go away.”   
  
“I care,” Fuuma decides, and finds that he means it. “Are you alone out here?”   
  
There’s a long silence, where the golden eyes flicker again and fade away to blue. The child slinks further away to him, cornering himself and staring, fearfully, out at Fuuma like a lost cat. The black hair is dirty and greasy and in need of a proper bath, and his face is dirty from the grim of being outside for too long. The child doesn’t have to answer, because Fuuma already knows. He’s alone.  
  
“I’m…” the little Kamui begins.   
  
Fuuma waits patiently.   
  
“… How do you know my name?” the child asks again.  
  
 _I’ve always known_ seems a bit strange, given the already strange circumstances, and Fuuma hesitates for half a moment. The little child must have sensed his hesitation because he recoils further under the dumpster and does not move, keeping his eyes locked on Fuuma.   
  
“It’s kind of hard to explain,” Fuuma admits. “But I’m here to help. Where’s your family?”  
  
“… Dead,” Kamui says, plainly, as if testing Fuuma. He watches his face, waiting him to recoil. When he doesn’t, his face shifts, flickering with a few emotions in fast succession so that Fuuma misses the bulk of them.   
  
“You’re alone?” Fuuma asks again.  
  
Kamui regards him, then nods.   
  
Fuuma lets out a soft sigh. “For… how long?”  
  
“Fifteen ye—” Kamui begins and then stops abruptly. “Fifteen…” he hesitates, trying to recover from his mistake, and lamely comes up with, “days.”   
  
“Years?” Fuuma asks, ignoring the child’s (not a child, looks like a child but is almost as old as him, Fuuma mentally corrects) pathetic attempts at cover.   
  
He bristles. “I—I said days! Fifteen days!”   
  
“I know what you are,” Fuuma offers, as if means for a peace offering but it only seems to make the child even more fearful as he recoils more into the darkness offered by the dumpster, and now his body is pressed up against the wall the dumpster is lined up against. His breathing is ragged, so ragged that even from the other side of the dumpster, out in the open, Fuuma can hear it. He imagines that his chest must be heaving, thumping in time with a rapid heartbeat, the pumping of adrenaline through his veins.   
  
“You do not,” Kamui decides.   
  
“You’re a vampire,” Fuuma shoots back, but keeps his voice low in case anyone were to be overhearing their conversation.   
  
The child is startled, rustling and rippling under the dumpster, eyes flashing gold again.  
  
“I don’t—”  
  
“It’s okay,” Fuuma says, purposefully keeping his voice soft. “It is, Kamui.”  
  
Kamui is watching him, like a hawk, like a cornered animal, unable to escape.   
  
“How do you know that…?”   
  
“I don’t know how,” Fuuma admits. “I just do.”   
  
Kamui shifts, and finally turns his gaze away, though his body remains tense for a moment. When he looks back at Fuuma, there’s an almost hopeful look in his eyes.   
  
There’s a long silence, which Fuuma spends recalling memories that he feels don’t legitimately belong to him, but to someone who was once him. They flash in his mind’s eye, sliding and speeding and pressing against his own memories, invading for space and importance.   
  
He asks, voice barely a whisper, “Are you hungry?”   
  
  
\---  
  
  
“This is my home,” Fuuma says over his shoulder, watching the vampire far behind him, stalking him but refusing to move too close.   
  
When he reaches into his pocket for his key, Kamui tenses up, his eyes widening and glowing gold. Fuuma’s eyes instinctively shift to the little vampire’s hands, which are uncurled and sporting sharpened nails he’d never seen before but somehow knew existed.   
  
He shows Kamui his key, his palms up. “I’m just going to unlock the door.”  
  
“You go in first,” the child commands. His eyes are narrow.   
  
Fuuma nods and unlocks the door. Kamui must be very hungry, if he’s willing to take blood from a stranger who inexplicably knows his nature and his name. For all Kamui knows, it could be a trap and yet he followed him here.   
  
He steps inside, leaving the door open for him. He moves inside, staying away from Kamui but within the child’s sights, hands held up in surrender. Kamui must find this satisfying because he follows him inside. He stands up on the tips of his toes and holds the door’s handle, before hesitantly shutting it.   
  
In the dim light of Fuuma’s apartment, Kamui looks even dirtier and hungrier, his face gaunt and haunted from deaths fifteen years in his past and yet still fresh on his face.   
  
Fuuma smiles at him, because he isn’t sure what else to do.   
  
Kamui follows him to the kitchen, stays on guard as Fuuma pointedly ignores his kitchen knives, making a show to slowly open the cupboard and pull out a cup for him. He sets is down on the table and glances at Kamui, who watches him like a hawk.   
  
Before moving towards the knives, Fuuma says, “I need to make a cut.”   
  
He waits, and Kamui nods. Fuuma grabs a knife and presses it to the skin of his wrist. He stares, hesitates, not sure what to do next. He’s never done this before and he’s not sure what to do. He swallows and doesn’t flinch when the blade slices his skin and the blood spills into the cup. When it’s full enough for him, which is a slow process and his blood flows slowly and spills over his palm and off his fingertips in an almost excruciatingly meaningless manner.   
  
He hands the cup to Kamui, and he drinks it down faster than it could ever be filled.   
  
Fuuma can’t watch it, even though he’s seen it plenty of times before—or felt it, in the memories. If he closes his eyes, he can recall the feel of hot breath against the curve of his neck, the feel of teeth and tongue on his skin as someone bites down and drinks. He can see the blood drizzling of his wrist as hooded, golden eyes gaze up at him, unwavering, the tongue lapping lazily over his skin even after the blood was done flowing.   
  
Kamui sets the cup on the ground and before Fuuma can say anything, the small vampire is dashing away, opening the window, and disappearing into the night.   
  
“Wait!” Fuuma calls before he can stop himself, racing to the window and looking out. But he can’t see Kamui.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
That night, he dreams:   
  
An angry fist against his cheek, knocking him backwards. The feel of adrenaline and hot flashes of anger. Angry golden eyes going in for the kill, only to deter off at the last moment, clipping his shoulder and sending him reeling.   
  
A soft laugh. Words. His words, his voice, breathless and thrilled. “You’re getting slow.”   
  
  
\---  
  
  
It’s nearly two weeks before he sees Kamui again. He’s sitting on his couch when he hears a tapping over his head. He turns his gaze towards the window behind him, eyebrows rising in momentary surprise when he sees Kamui. He cannot ignore the small thrill of happiness at seeing him again.  
  
He opens the window.  
  
“I’m hungry,” Kamui declares.   
  
Fuuma looks surprised a moment before laughing. “Oh. Okay.”   
  
Kamui follows him to the kitchen.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
He goes on in this manner, appearing on his doorstep or windowsill whenever he’s hungry. Each time he returns, he looks grimier than before. He’s still on the defensive, still stays far away from Fuuma and refuses to let Fuuma anywhere near him—if Fuuma steps too close, Kamui is gone within moments, dashing away and not looking back.   
  
Fuuma, for whatever reason he can’t decide, hates whenever he leaves—even if he knows, now, that he comes back. So he stays far away from Kamui, in the small hope that Kamui will stay longer this time.   
  
“Where do you go when you aren’t here?” he asks the small child.   
  
“I’m not going to tell you,” Kamui says and sounds scandalized by the mere suggestion of telling.   
  
Fuuma laughs. “Oh.”   
  
“Why do you care?” Kamui asks, and this is always a question he asks—and a question that Fuuma can’t answer.   
  
He hands Kamui a glass of his blood, and doesn’t answer.   
  
Kamui drinks and leaves.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
“You can stay here,” Fuuma tells him one day.   
  
Kamui freezes, and then stares at him. Fuuma doesn’t miss the hopeful flicker in his eyes.   
  
“… Why?” he asks.  
  
Fuuma shrugs. “You come and go enough as it is. I don’t know where you go when you aren’t here, but you’re here enough it’d make sense. Plus,” he adds, glancing at the dirty face staring hopefully back at him, “you could really use a bath.”   
  
Kamui’s nose scrunches up and he shifts his gaze away, the lines in his face smoothing out as he shuffles his feet.   
  
“… I can really stay?”   
  
“If you want.”   
  
Kamui is silent.   
  
And then he nods.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
Even with Kamui staying in his apartment now, the child is still elusive. Fuuma goes hours without knowing whether Kamui is even in the house. His footsteps are silent, and he doesn’t like to make himself known to Fuuma. Occasionally, Fuuma will catch the shift of a shadow as the child scurries away into another room, or he’ll turn around and Kamui is staring at him from around a corner.  
  
The only time that Fuuma sees Kamui consistently is when he needs Fuuma’s blood. He’s given over his coat closet to Kamui. It’s the only room available in his tiny apartment—and he’s pretty sure that Kamui does not sleep—and Kamui seems to like it. He can keep the door open at the end of the hallway and see all the other doors in the apartment, plan his escape route if he must. He sits up in the top shelf of the closet (Fuuma isn’t sure how he gets up there but sums it up to vampire powers) and stares at Fuuma as he moves through his own apartment, after showering or after collecting his laundry or after making food. Automatically, as if drawn to Kamui like a magnet, his gaze turns towards the closet to make sure the child is in there.   
  
After months of carrying on in such a fashion, in which the dreams have bombarded him insistently, and he’s cut his wrist enough times to make the employees at his work worry over him, Kamui follows Fuuma around the apartment. It’s subtle at first, but soon enough Fuuma realizes that Kamui has become attached to him.   
  
And that makes him happier than he’d care to admit or examine.   
  
He dreams one night—a soft hiss of anger, fighting, the thrill of adrenaline pumping through his veins.   
  
When he wakes up, he turns his head and finds a tiny face peering back at him. Somewhere in the back of his head, groggy from sleep, Fuuma figures he should be surprised to see the little vampire staring at him so blatantly in the middle of the night but somehow he can’t feel anything but slight amusement, if anything.   
  
“Kamui?” he asks.   
  
“You sleep a lot,” the child decides, and then scoots closer to him to examine his sleepy face. “Not even I sleep this much.”  
  
Fuuma blinks at him and then buries his head into his pillow. “Sorry to disappoint.”   
  
He feels a small hand touch the back of his head. It’s so soft, so fleeting, that Fuuma thinks that he must have imagined it. When he lifts his head, the child’s hands are planted firmly at his side as he leans in to inspect Fuuma some more, his face scrunching up in thought as he studies his face with inquisitive blue eyes.   
  
“Yes?” he asks.   
  
Kamui frowns. “If you’re so tired all the time, you should just sleep more.”   
  
“I have work and things like that,” Fuuma explains gently. Then he laughs. “As much as I’d like to sleep all day, I suppose.”   
  
Kamui’s eyes narrow. “You should sleep now.”  
  
“I was, before you woke me up.”  
  
The little child’s cheeks puff up in surprised outrage and he looks away, as if embarrassed. After a long moment he manages to mumble out a quiet, “Sorry.”   
  
Fuuma, blinking his eyes sleepily, lifts a hand and ruffles the child vampire’s hair.   
  
“It’s fine, Kamui.”   
  
  
\---  
  
  
“You’re late,” Kamui tells him from his position in the closet, on the top shelf.   
  
Fuuma drops his bag of food on the floor as he slips off his shoes, turning his attention towards the opened closet. He grins, almost apologetic, but mostly amused at the way the large blue eyes stare at him from the confines of various articles of clothing and blankets Kamui has collected to make his stay in the closet more comfortable.   
  
“I’m back,” he says.   
  
“Hmph,” Kamui huffs and then jumps down from the top shelf, landing without so much as a thud on the ground. He pads towards Fuuma, stopping at his side, and tugging on his pants leg, tiny hand curled into the soft denim of his jeans. “I’m hungry.”   
  
“I’m sure you are,” Fuuma says and stoops down so he can pick Kamui up, cradling him in the crook of his arm as he moves towards the kitchen.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
Kotori and Kamui hit it off almost immediately when they meet for the first time. Kotori isn’t much older than how Kamui appears and Fuuma makes a sandwich for Kotori as Kotori and Kamui sit in Fuuma’s bedroom. Kotori is showing Kamui how to fold paper into origami shapes, and her laughter meets Fuuma’s ears even in the kitchen.   
  
When he goes to check on the two of them, Kamui’s ears are pink and he’s looking away from Kotori, but he can recognize the way his face is soft and filled with pleasure. Kotori is laughing and smiling more than he had ever seen her.   
  
He leaves them be.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
That night, he dreams of a body pressing up against his, arms curling around his neck and pulling him down to kiss him. Their lips crush together—hot breaths, shallow breaths, steady breaths. He can feel sharp fingers digging into his soft skin, floating and pressing into the touch.   
  
When they pull apart, Fuuma can see the other’s face, angular and almost gentle in the pale light. Golden eyes stare at him, hungry.   
  
When he wakes up, he knows. In another life, he was in love with Kamui.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
“How old are you?”   
  
“Me?” Fuuma asks.   
  
Kamui nods.   
  
“Twenty-three.”   
  
Kamui looks surprised, and frowns, eyebrows knitting together.   
  
Fuuma pauses, then ruffles his hair. Kamui bats his hand away, looking miffed by the action but never telling him to stop like he had when Fuuma first started the action.   
  
“What is it?” Fuuma asks. “Something on your mind?”   
  
“You’re younger than me,” Kamui says.   
  
“I am?” Fuuma asks, then laughs. “I guess I am, huh? Well…”  
  
“But you look older,” Kamui insists.   
  
“Well,” Fuuma pauses, collecting his words. “I am human, Kamui.”  
  
Kamui’s frown deepens. “So?”  
  
“So… well…” Fuuma trails off, looking confused for half a second before he sighs and sets himself down next to Kamui. Kamui is folding a trail of paper cranes, which he’ll string into a long necklace and give to Kotori when she comes to visit next. Fuuma taps his hands against the floor and shrugs one shoulder. “You’re a vampire and I’m a human.”  
  
“But what does that matter?”  
  
“Surely you know about the difference between the two of us, Kamui.”   
  
“All I know about humans is I’m supposed to stay away from them.”  
  
“Your mother told you that?”  
  
Kamui nods. “If she were still around and knew I stayed with you, she’d be mad.”   
  
“You wouldn’t be staying with me if you still had your family, Kamui,” Fuuma said and stroked his hand over Kamui’s little head, petting his hair absently.   
  
Kamui looks up at him, still frowning, though less from annoyance and confusion, and more from thoughtfulness and curiosity.   
  
“Why do you look older even though you’re younger?”   
  
“Humans don’t live as long as vampires do,” Fuuma explains. The hand on Kamui’s head pauses and Kamui turns his head to stare up at him.   
  
“How long?”  
  
“Most don’t live past one hundred.”   
  
For the first time in a long time, Kamui looks stricken. Fuuma’s taken aback by the expression, the wide blue eyes staring at him in shock and denial. He shakes his head furiously and Fuuma has to drop his hand away. Kamui stands up, grips his tiny hands together before reaching out and touching Fuuma’s face, tracing the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. His face scrunches up as he examines Fuuma’s expression, who watches him impassively a moment before laughing quietly, closing his eyes, and touching the small child’s hands.   
  
He collects the hands in his own, fingers curling around the tiny palms and holding them close. “One hundred is young for you, isn’t it?”  
  
“… Yeah,” Kamui admits, his voice quiet and uncertain.   
  
And then the tears come.   
  
“You’ll die?” he asks quietly, tears collecting in the corners of his eyes before sliding down his cheeks. Fuuma doesn’t dare pull his hands away from Kamui’s, no matter how much he wants to wipe them away.   
  
He can only nod, and it’s enough to make Kamui fling himself at him, clutching to him tightly. Fuuma is, once again, taken aback by the blatant show of affection. But he finds himself feeling the same way, the clench in his chest painful to focus on. He curls his arms around Kamui’s small body and holds him close, closing his eyes and banishing the memories that fight to make themselves known.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
He dreams of death that night, a memory of a death he’s already witnessed.   
  
Sad blue eyes watching him as the world fades from view. A hand lifting to touch Kamui’s cheek, the feel of his own lips pulling back into a smile.   
  
“Sorry.”   
  
The word jolts him awake so that he forgets who in the dream actually said it.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
He grows older, and Kamui stays the same. Kamui still stays in the closet. Kamui still drinks from the cup. Kamui still makes cranes for Kotori.   
  
Fuuma tries his hardest not to pay attention to the clenched heart in his chest, the feeling that he’s somehow missed something.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
He feels himself kissed by Kamui, the dreamscape a watery memory, as if fading away completely. The lips against his throat, against his chin, against his lips.   
  
“We’ll meet again,” one of them promises and he doesn’t know who. He only remembers that familiar feeling of a clenched heart, of things left unsaid.   
  
  
\---  
  
  
This is the closest he’ll ever have to love, Fuuma decides.   
  
Kamui sits, curled into his side. He’s grown a little, but not nearly as much as Fuuma has. The laugh lines are becoming wrinkled lines. He’s growing older. Kamui is still just as young as he was before, perhaps less rounded, less boyish.   
  
He closes his eyes, because it’s all he has. All he can have are memories of a world long gone, and the hope that maybe next time it’ll be right, maybe next time they’ll be able to meet each other like they promised.   
  
This is all he has.


End file.
